The Backstory: Doctor’s Orders: Booze During Prohibition

Forget Dry January. Can you imagine being dry for 13 years? That was Prohibition from 1920 to 1933. But some folks, including one wildly famous international visitor, found some sneaky ways around the ban, claiming doctor’s orders. And most others drank really sketchy liquor.

Feel free to DM me if you have a story you’d like me to cover . . on Facebook it’s Patty Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, I get it, Trust me, I really get it.
It's January. Time to straighten up, take a good look
at ourselves and fix what needs to be fixed. Now.
For some of us, it's dry January, and that means
just for the month, switching from beer, wine, and liquor
to sparkling water, juice or soda. But not everybody's willing

(00:20):
to give up the hoots, right, It's nothing new in America.
Prohibition kicked in in nineteen twenty. Lots of folks, including
one very prominent visitor to the US, found a way
to get around those strict liquor laws. I'm Patty Steele,
party on even using doctors' orders to get a stiff drink.

(00:41):
That's next on the backstory. The backstory is back all right.
On January seventeenth, nineteen twenty, when prohibition shut down all
the bars, saloons, and taverns across the United States, the dries,
as they were called, were extra. They thought that a

(01:01):
lot of the problems in our society were rooted in booze. Alcoholism.
They said led to fights, domestic violence, family breakups, and
what was called saloon based political corruption. They saw it
as a battle for public morals and health progressives from
all the big political parties, as well as the Women's
Temperance Union, pushed for the ban on booze of all types.

(01:25):
But as you can imagine, there were a bunch of
people who decided they'd find a way around prohibition, even
if it was an illegal path or sketchy path at best.
In nineteen twenty two, Winston Churchill, later the Prime Minister
of Great Britain, came to the United States to give
some speeches. He was a super wealthy aristocratic party boy,

(01:47):
but he was also building his political career. Now. The
problem is Winston, in addition to being a big cigar smoker,
loved to drink. Records show he would start his day
with a big glass of whiskey and soda, followed by
a full bottle of champagne at lunch. He'd have pre
dinner cocktails and several glasses of wine during dinner, and

(02:09):
then brandy report in the evening. Wow. But this was
prohibition in America. So what did he do when he
came here? Well, it seems he brought his own stash.
The party continued for Winston and others with the connections
and means to get what they needed. In fact, Churchill
came back in nineteen twenty nine for a grand tour

(02:31):
of North America while he was also attempting to build
his son, Randolph's political career. They started in Canada and
then came to the US still prohibition, remember that. But
they partied at Hurst Castle and in Hollywood, where Charlie
Chaplin hosted them for a raucous time. Meantime, young Randolph
would sneak very young actresses into his rooms for wild parties.

(02:55):
At the end of that trip, Winston happened to be
hit by a taxi cab in New York. But guess
what That run in with the taxi came in kind
of handy. When Winston visited New York City once again
in nineteen thirty two, he came prepared. Turns out his
doctor in New York was more than willing to lend
a hand. Doctor O. C. Pickhard wrote the following letter

(03:18):
for Winston and told him to keep it on him
at all times. It read, this is to certify that
the post accident convalescence of the Honorable Winston S. Churchill
necessitates the use of alcoholic spirits, especially at meal times.
The quantity is naturally indefinite, but the minimum requirements would

(03:38):
be two hundred and fifty cubic centimeters signed auto pihard MD.
That was three years after the taxi mishap. And by
the way, that's eight ounces of booze at any given time. Anyway,
back to the early twenties, the Roaring twenties, of course,
everybody wanted to sip pretty quickly. The desire for cocktails

(03:59):
gave rye to speak, easies, black market bootleggers, and the
growth of organized crime. Moonshine, like homemade bathtub gin, was
a hot commodity. Not to mention big business bootlegged liquor,
sometimes made with industrial alcohol, neither tasty nor healthy. In fact,
bootleggers were willing to try pretty much anything to meet

(04:21):
the demand for illegal liquor. Some added dead rats to
their moonshine to make it taste more like bourbon. Yum
doesn't sound like any bourbon I've had. They also added
tar and oil from trees to simulate gin and scotch.
Doctors saw a whole lot more business when it came
to people getting sick from partying. By the mid nineteen twenties,

(04:44):
the government was willing to go to dangerous lengths to
try to shut down the bootleggers. They started adding denatured
alcohol to the industrial alcohol supply that bootleggers were using
for illicit booze. That government intervention may have led across
the country to as many as five thousand deaths. It
finally became clear that prohibition wasn't sustainable. It had shut

(05:08):
down businesses that could have employed tens of thousands at
least during the depression, and at the end of the day,
like everything else, it all came down to money. The
government couldn't effectively enforce prohibition, especially during the depression because
like everybody else, they had no money. During prohibition, they
lost about two hundred and twenty six million dollars a

(05:31):
year when they lost the tax revenue from the sale
of liquor. That would be billions of dollars in today's money.
After prohibition went away, they immediately began taking in a
minimum of four hundred and thirty five million dollars a
year just from the sales tax on booze. So here's
the question. Did prohibition do any good while it was

(05:52):
in effect, Well, it didn't really impact the number of
people drinking alcohol long term, but medical records show there
was a decrease in cirrhosis of the liver caused by alcohol,
alcoholic psychosis, and infant mortality during those years. On the
other hand, stats show that in many cities crime actually

(06:13):
rose during prohibition and drug addiction was up by as
much as forty five percent. Prohibition ended on December fifth,
nineteen thirty three, with the ratification of the twenty first Amendment,
which repealed the eighteenth Amendment banning booze through prohibition. It's actually,
believe it or not, the only time a constitutional amendment

(06:36):
has been passed in order to repeal another amendment. I
guess Churchill would argue that for him, booze was just
with the doctor ordered because despite the smoking, drinking and
tons of rich food he took in along with the
stress of running Great Britain during World War II, Winston
Churchill still managed to live to the ripe old age

(06:59):
of nineteen I hope you like the backstory with Patty Steele.
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Also feel free to DM me if you have a
story you'd like me to cover. On Facebook, It's Patty
Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele. I'm Patty Steele.

(07:24):
The Backstories a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks, the Elvis
Durand Group, and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is Doug Fraser.
Our writer Jake Kushner. We have new episodes every Tuesday
and Friday. Feel free to reach out to me with
comments and even story suggestions on Instagram at Real Patty
Steele and on Facebook at Patty Steele. Thanks for listening

(07:47):
to the Backstory with Patty Steele, the pieces of history
you didn't know you needed to know.